Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume IX.djvu/621

 JELLY FISH 601 garian revolution in 1848, when his popularity among the Croats and their discontent at the advantages gained by the Magyars made him a convenient instrument for a reactionary move- ment. Being appointed by the emperor Ferdi- nand ban of Croatia, Slavonia, and Dalmatia, and general-in-chief in the southern districts, he carried on with vigor the consolidation of the Slavic tribes, convoked a diet, disregarded all adverse orders extorted from the court of Vienna by the Hungarian ministry, and finally invaded Hungary in September. Repulsed at Pakozd (Sept. 29), he joined Windischgratz be- fore Vienna, defeated Perczel at Moor (Dec. 29), and fought at Kapolna (February, 1849). Re- moved to the southern theatre of war, he was completely beaten by Guyon at Kis-Hegyes (July 14). His subsequent career was of little impor- tance. His Oedichte were published at Vienna in 1850, and his soldier songs were popular. JELLY FISH, the popular name of the aca- lephan class of radiated animals, or medusa, Adult Sun Fish (Aurclia). including the orders hydroidai, discophora, and ctenophora. The body is transparent and jel- ly-like, disk-shaped, with the mouth down- ward and in the centre of the enclosed cavity, from which hang down appendages varying in number, length, and purpose. In the genuine medusa?, of which the sun fish (aurelia), so common on our beaches after storms or floating in our waters in the sum- mer, is a-^tood example, the body is so largely made up of water that on drying it is reduced to a mere film of membrane ; they would hard- ly be seen in the water were it not for their beautiful colors. The digestive cavity is more complex than in the polyps, being excavated in the substance of the body with branches ramifying in various directions ; the stomach seems to perform the office of a heart, dis- tributing the products of digestion over the system, and the food, arriving at the periph- ery, escapes by as many openings as there are traversing tubes ; on the free margin are generally numerous minute tentacles, forming beautifully delicate appendages, which absorb water into the marginal canal in contact with the food ; digestion is rapidly performed ; the circulation of the digested materials is irregu- lar, sometimes in one direction and sometimes in another. The bunches of colored eggs gen- erally hang outside the tentacles which sur- round the mouth ; in some, red specks between the tentacles have been conjectured to be eyes. The common jelly fishes move by the alternate contractions and dilatations of the gelatinous disk ; others, like the Portuguese man-of-war (physalia), have a large vesicle which supports the whole community at the surface of the ocean, motion being effected by the numerous contractile tentacles and the contractions of the air bladder ; others (the ctenopjiorce or beroid medusas) move by means of vertical series of swimming appendages resembling the fins of a crab. This class presents the curious phe- nomena of alternate generation, illustrated by Steenstrup, Sars, and others, noticed also in other classes of the animal kingdom, especial- ly the helminths or entozoa. The tubularia, common in pools left by the tide, a hydroid growing in tufts like small shrubs, hangs like a flower from a slender tube, with the mouth surrounded by tentacles, each animal connect- ed with the rest of the community, and each mouth receiving nutriment for the whole ; the young of this hydroid do not resemble the parent, but are little, delicate, translucent jelly fishes, like tiny cups from which hang down four long threads, and a proboscis at the end of which is the mouth ; by the side of the buds branching out from the parent hang bunches of little spheres from which the jelly fishes are produced; along the proboscis of the float- ing cup are other spheres or eggs, from which are produced little pear-shaped bodies, which become attached and grow into the first nien- 1. Early stape of Jelly Fish (Aurclia). 2. Stroblla, more ad- vanced stage. 8. "Strobila, ready to be detached, and form the adult (Ephyra). tioned branching hydroid. It will thus be seen that the grandchild resembles the grand- parent, and the hydroid is reproduced through a generation of jelly fishes into a hydroid again ; if the first be a coryne. the jelly fish would be a tarsia. Some small single hydroids, not